Resident Evil_ Extinction - Keith R. A. DeCandido [56]
And it was a noble purpose, Timson thought. This was the first step toward a cure.
Gretzky was looking at the triangle shape and looking at the base. Timson was still grinning. “Look at the dexterity. He has memory and reasoning skills.”
Moody picked up the camera, staring at his own befuddled image. “It’s a miracle. The serum works.” To Isaacs, he added, “You’ve domesticated them—you’ve done it.”
Timson rolled his eyes at Moody’s sucking up. He was definitely doing a caption contest with that picture.
Looking over at Gretzky, Timson’s face fell. He was trying to put the triangle into the circle.
Just when Timson was thinking that Moody needed to ratchet back the sucking up until he actually put the triangle into the triangle-shaped hole, Gretzky started slamming the triangle down onto the base harder and harder. Timson winced as the base started to crack from the impact. He had assured Humberg that nothing would happen to the only remembrance he had of his little boy. Probably a stupid promise to make—getting attached to anything was fatally stupid in this day and age—but Timson had made it nonetheless, and he was feeling responsible.
Gretzky picked up the base and threw it across the room with an angry snarl, and Timson considered that breaking the news to Humberg was going to be the least of his problems.
Throwing his head back, Gretzky started howling with rage, a noise that Timson had never heard any of the corpses make before.
Then he grabbed Moody and ripped his head off.
Timson’s entire body felt as if it were made of stone. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He just stood there and watched as Gretzky literally tore Brendan Moody’s head away from his neck, as if he were popping the lid off a cheap beer bottle. Blood sprayed everywhere, including onto the camera that Moody’s body was still holding.
With a supreme effort, Timson managed to turn his head. He saw Isaacs calmly walking to the door—
—and shutting it behind him!
“No!” Timson ran toward the door, but it was already sealing shut again. “Please!”
The last thing Timson saw before Grestky grabbed him was Isaacs looking on calmly.
It wasn’t a coping mechanism.
In his final moments before his body was savagely devoured by the animated corpse, Timson realized that Isaacs didn’t tolerate the bizarre shenanigans of his staff because he understood their difficulties.
He just didn’t care.
FIFTEEN
BEFORE
Alice had been fighting for her life when she lost control.
They had found an entire enclave of undead who were pretty much taking over Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. A group of students and faculty were huddled in Duhme Hall, frightened for their lives as the undead started to pound down the front door.
Carlos, L.J., Alice, and the other stragglers they’d picked up—a New York City cop named Lou Molina, a Marine named A.J. Briscoe, and a welder named Joseph King who was handy with a shotgun—were fighting off the undead who were swarming the front door to the dormitory like soldiers besieging a castle. Angie, of course, waited in the SUV with the last of their recruits, a martial arts instructor named Jisun Burton, whose job was to keep Angie safe. They had started calling themselves the strike team, traveling around the country trying to help people who’d been overwhelmed by the undead. There wasn’t enough of a government left to organize national forces in that regard, so everyone was on his or her own. There wasn’t anywhere in the continental United States that wasn’t infected at this point. Rumors had been flying about Jill doing likewise, after helping the FBI for a while, but most of the FBI was infected, too.
Then it happened.
One moment, Alice was delivering a jumping spin kick that snapped the neck of an undead wearing a T-shirt